Friday, May 01, 2015

I have just learned that one of my Discovery class students from last term has died, horribly. In every class I've ever been in there has been someone like him, a
student who is determined to do things the hard way, to re-invent the
wheel, to find a better way to do the things I am trying to convey. When
I was a student, it should go without saying, that student was me. I try to take special pains to connect with that student, in a no doubt
mostly vain effort to spare the poor bastard some of the lessons I
learned through years of screwing up. Although it is exciting and fun to have students who pick it
up quickly, and get it, and are obviously going to be highly skilled
sooner rather than later (or never), it's the Duanes that I am trying to
reach, in the hope that I can spare them some of the trial and error
that I went through.

Duane Bores deserves to be remembered as someone who worked hard to gain every inch. It grieves me that he will instead be recalled as someone who went home one day, shot and wounded his parents (they are expected to recover), engaged in a firefight with the Wheatfield Police, then shot himself in the head. Poor son of a bitch-- he had to do everything the hard way, and then I guess it got too hard